Bad Lone Gunman Kills 4 in Shopping Mall Finland

This is a discussion on Bad Lone Gunman Kills 4 in Shopping Mall Finland within the In the News: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Reporting on Sky News in the UK
Finland: Eyewitnesses Report Shooting At Shopping Centre In Town Of Espoo, Near Helsinki | World News | Sky ...

Inevitably the guys that do this end up shooting themselves when they figure it's all over anyway. How much better would it be if an armed citizen could end the fight before the crazy guy with the gun thinks he's finished?

Time after time, we see these things happen and it's always in a place where the victims have been disarmed through legal or administrative means. What a shame.

Finnish shopping centre gunman slaughters five - including ex-wife - before 'turning gun on himself'By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 2:30 PM on 31st December 2009
Comments (47) Add to My Stories Ibrahim Shkupolli is on the run following this morning's attack. He may have since turned the gun on himself
A gunman killed his ex-wife before shooting dead four people at a Finnish shopping centre, before allegedly turning the gun on himself.
At least seven shots were fired at the Sello shopping centre in the town of Espoo, close to the capital Helsinki.
Four people - three men and a women - were killed in the attack, which began at about 8.30am this morning.
A witness claimed the gunman, dressed in black, opened fire on the second floor of the complex.
Another described how one victim was shot twice in the head.

The gunman - identified as 43-year-old Ibrahim Shkupolli - then left the scene.
When police searched a flat linked to the man, they found a body believed to be his ex-wife.
Shkupolli used a 9-millimeter caliber hand gun for the killings.
A sixth body linked to the shooting was discovered in the home of the suspect, and police believe this is the perpetrator.

Police storm into the shopping centre in the southern Finnish city of Espoo, near Helsinki. At least five people are believed to be dead

Police vehicles and ambulances parked outside the Sello shopping centre as the area is evacuated
A policeman guards the entrance to the shopping centre
The ex-girlfriend, a Finnish woman born in 1967, also worked at the mall and had taken out a restraining order against Shkupolli, police said.
Witnesses said panic erupted at the mall, one of the Nordic region's largest, when the shots rang out.
Hundreds of mall workers were evacuated to a nearby library and firehouse, trains were halted and helicopters brought in as police launched a manhunt for the heavily armed killer.
After several hours, a body was found in Shkupolli's home, which police believed to be the killer himself. Police refused to confirm the exact identity immediately, but said the cause of the death appeared to be suicide.
Police refused to discuss Shkupolli's nationality, but Finnish media reported he was an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo.
At a news conference, police officials refused to say whether the four killed at the mall had been targeted by Shkupolli.
The mid-morning slayings shocked hundreds of people who had gone shopping early on New Year's Eve.
One witness told the state broadcaster YLE that a gunman dressed in black began randomly shooting at people on the second floor of the mall.
'There were loads of people who were crying, and many vendors who were completely panicked,' the unnamed witness said.
Another female witness told YLE radio news she saw the suspect carrying a long-barrelled pistol and rushing past the cashier line at Sello's Prisma supermarket, where the slayings took place.
A forensics team begins work in the Prisma supermarket at the Sello shopping center
A witness who saw the attack told YLE he saw one worker lying on the floor covered in blood.
YLE said shots were fired at about 10:20am (08:20 GMT) and parts of the mall were evacuated. The newspaper Ilta-Sanomat said on its website at least seven shots were fired, but it gave no source for the information.
Another witness who was in the centre at the time told Finnish radio that a panic ensued as the shooting began. 'There were loads of people who were crying, and many vendors who were completely panicked.
'It seems like they hadn't caught the one who shot. No one seemed to know what had happened.'
Inside the Sello shopping centre in Espoo, Finland, where the shooting took place (file picture)
The Sello shopping centre describes itself as one of the Nordic region's largest with more than 170 shops. It opened in 2005.

Espoo, home of the Nokia phone company, is Finland's second largest city.
In the last two years there have been massacres by lone gunmen in the country.
This is the third public shooting in as many years, and Finland tightened gun control regulations after school shootings in 2007 and 2008.
In the town of Kauhajoki in September of last year Matti Saari killed ten people at his vocational college and then set their bodies alight. He had posted warnings of his rampage on the internet.

In November, 2007, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, killed eight people and himself at a school in Jokela.
Finland has deep-rooted hunting traditions and ranks - along with the United States - among the top five nations in the world in civilian gun ownership.

The country has 1.6 million firearms in private hands - with a population of 5.3 million.
Politicians, social workers and religious leaders have urged tighter gun laws, more vigilance of Internet sites, and more social bonding in the small Nordic nation, known for its high suicide rates, heavy drinking and domestic violence.

If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.--Samuel Adams as Candidus, Boston Gazette 20 Jan. 1772